Feicim: A grid-computing tool for facilitating scientific collaboration

Computing applications throughout the world, whether in business or academia, are becoming more complex and demanding in terms of resources. At the same time, they are becoming increasingly collaborative and interdisciplinary. Grid based computational infrastructure has emerged as a natural response to these demands. The Grid is a promising next generation computing platform for solving large-scale resource intensive problems and facilitates multi-institutional and multi-disciplinary collaboration.

We design and develop a data oriented Grid solution, called Data-Grid Environment and Tools (DGET), which unifies the access of resources and presents a user-friendly interface to allow the development and execution of Data-Grid applications. DGET is prototyped on one of the CERN projects; LHCb. This project has been chosen by its intrinsic scientific merit, its reliance on remote data access, and its connection to international Grid efforts. The results of this research will be integrated and implemented as a package, which can be used by any user community to unite any computing platforms with any architectural features, to manage their own dedicated applications.

The first DGET prototype is called Feicim. In implementing Feicim, we invest a significant effort in presenting the user with a simple yet comprehensive interface, as programming and their environments become increasingly complex. Like its ancestor, Feicim is a tool that unifies the representation of data and other resources (hardware and software). It provides resource discovery of data-files, data-content and versions of algorithm implementation through an intuitive graphical user interface. It allows local or remote data access stored on Grid type platforms, the viewing and creation of user-defined or collaboration-defined processes, the implementation of algorithms for user applications, and the production of output data-files and/or histograms. An application of Feicim is illustrated using the LHCb data. It provides a graphical view of the Gaudi architecture, LHCb event data model, and interfaces to the file catalogue. Feicim is particularly suited to such frameworks as Gaudi which consider algorithms as objects. Instant viewing of any LHCb data will be of particular value in the commissioning of the detector and for quickly familiarising newcomers to the data and software environment